George Coombs

TalkBack

The will of conquerors

In 1650, in his pamphlet Fire in the Bush, Gerrard
Winstanley described the law as ‘... the decorative will of
conquerors, how they will have their subjects to be ruled’. This,
like much of Winstanley’s thought, seems applicable to contemporary
society. Recently there has been a sense of outrage over a female
prisoner being forced to give birth while handcuffed (a situation
from which she’s hardly likely to do a bunk, let’s face it!) and
also continuing concerns relating to the conduct and credibilty of
the police.

Racism is endemic among law enforcement officers and intimidation
of witnesses and suspects is by no means unusual. Searchlight
magazine carried a report in May 1991 that:

‘Racist police officers are escaping disciplinary
action. At the same time the Metropolitan Police have been
systematically under reporting complaints for the last three years.
No police officer in London has been disciplined as a result of 599
complaints of racist behaviour made since 1987.’

On 2 April Socialist Worker reported on Lord McAlpine’s
encounter with the police which had been originally reported in the
previous week’s Sunday Express. McAlpine gave an anguished
account of being held in Tottenham Court Road Police Station for
nearly two hours in a room that was ‘... extremely hot, very stuffy
and smelt of a mixture of vomit and disinfectant’. Some of
McAlpine’s further comments are worth quoting:

‘I felt relentless hostility. The whole experience was
horrifying. I know I am innocent. I began to feel guilty ... I felt a
great urge to please these policemen ... The body language of the
police was very threatening ... the atmosphere fraught with personal
danger ... After my experience I am convinced that the atmosphere and
environment of a police interview under caution are likely to produce
evidence that will convict an innocent man.’

The item concludes that ‘it is amazing what a taste of real life
can do’. It is indeed. I know this, having myself been questioned
at a police station following allegations having been made against me.

I was able to cope in such a way as to portray the accusations as
the pernicious lies they were. I am not easily intimidated.

Three police officers have been charged over the death of Joy
Gardner. The leader of the Police Federation is, I believe, very
angry about this. I wonder to what giddy heights his anger would soar
if the proposed new offence of ‘intimidating witnesses’ was
brought in. The cells would surely overflow with policemen and policewomen.

The police have never been good at deduction or detective work as
such. Neither are they adept at upholding any remotely credible
notions of fairness and justice.

Police protect fascists and intimidate anti-fascist demonstrators.
This fact is, of course, reminiscent of the 1930s when Mosley’s
British Union of Fascists were allowed to march in London while the
Communist Party demonstrating against unemployment was not.

Kenneth Leech’s book Struggle in Babylon mentions a 1984
front page headline in the Guardian which read ‘Blackest Day
For Pit Violence’. The editor received a letter from Leech asking
if this was a subtle way of making the point that the miners were
experiencing the kind of police violence that black people had known
for some time and which was largely responsible for the 1981
uprisings. Was black being used in its classical racist meaning of
worst? His letter was never published.

We must be aware that the law is not impartial or sacred. It is a
weapon wielded in the class struggle. How right Winstanley was when
commenting in his own time. How right he is now. Fascism failed to
get a grip in the 1930s because the law was defied. Suffragettes
defied the law to win voting rights for women. The Tolpuddle Martyrs
defied the law, as did so many others. The law has been challenged in
the past by organised, collective action. It can still be challenged,
now and in the future.